Walking Wilshire

When I moved to Los Angeles over a decade ago, the only Wilshire I knew was the one I’d drive to get to Santa Monica: traveling through Beverly Hills’ tourist-trodden retail and Westwood’s Condo Canyon until it dead-ended at the Pacific Ocean. But in the intervening years, as I began to bus, bike and walk more, I slowly got introduced to the eastern half of Wilshire. Home some of the city’s densest and most diverse neighborhoods, plus some pretty exciting and innovative transit projects (hello, BRT lanes!), this end of Wilshire has quickly become one of my favorite places in the city to explore. It’s also one of the most interesting streets, history-wise, as the “Millionaire Socialist” Henry Gaylord Wilshire originally donated the land to the city with the stipulation that it be the first LA street designed exclusively for cars.

On a sunny April day (National Walking Day, in fact), I walked the first half of Wilshire, from its start in downtown to Fairfax Avenue, to see what this six-mile stretch of street could tell us about what kind of city we live in today. I recorded sound at 59 stops along the way (including interviewing 10 local residents), and took dozens of photos in an attempt to capture an “audio snapshot” of the boulevard. I also mapped all the photos and linked all the interviews to their photos and locations, so you should be able to get more information about any place I recorded or photographed.

I sadly, will not be in town for this CicLAvia, so I hope to have turned my adventure into a kind of walking guide so you can experience all the weird and wonderful Wilshire I discovered along the way. If you are planning on walking CicLAvia, Los Angeles Walks will be leading a WalkLAvia from Wilshire and Grand starting at 9:00 a.m. UPDATE: Here are details for 2014’s WalkLAvia. And of course this information does not expire after CicLAvia, it can be used anytime, and I’d love to hear what else you stumble upon out there. Enjoy!

Walking Wilshire (A Poem)

Most know its string of glitzy addresses ending in a Pacific Ocean view
But Wilshire Boulevard offers some of the most diverse glimpses of L.A. life, too

Slicing through the basin, it creates a cross-section of the population
And as the first major east-west arterial it delivered new ideas about transportation

“Cars only!” was the idea of Henry Gaylord Wilshire, the Millionaire Socialist
So I walked Wilshire’s eastern half to see if his century-old vision still exists

I began at One Wilshire, which traffics gigabytes instead of papers
Here data flows like the office workers who scurry between skyscrapers

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